This one's a beautiful, tender, quiet romantic drama with a moody atmosphere, set in a tight knit Welsh fishing community. It's a touching story about a man waking up sexually in the middle of his life, and how he, his family, and everyone around him deal with it, which makes it emotional and sentimental without ever getting over the top. The slow burn plays out against a landscape that's as bleak as it is gorgeous, where quiet, closed off men are stuck inside rigid ideas of what masculinity should be. Some people might be reminded of "God's Own Country," but I think both films are lovely in their own way. Jack is a middle aged guy who co-owns a mussel farm with his rough around the edges brother Dyfan, and the tension between the two of them is simmering under the surface right from the start. Dyfan's three sons all help out with the work, while Jack's sulky teenage son Tom keeps skipping out. Jack's been with his wife since they were both 16, and...
Ramin grew up with a loving family until his parents died and everything changed. He got taken in by a man named Chai, who had zero interest in actually raising him and instead used him as a political prop to build influence and public support. Years of being controlled, manipulated and abused in that household shaped who Ramin became. Then Napat walks into his life, the son of a mafia king, though nobody around him knows that. These two feel a pull toward each other and end up sleeping together twice, with Napat genuinely falling for this man without having any idea that Ramin is basically living under Chai's thumb. Neither of them knows who the other really is, and that creates this almost-real love situation hanging between them that neither can actually speak out loud. Ramin cannot say anything because he has been sent to either kill Napat or destroy his feelings somehow. Napat stays quiet because he is convinced Ramin will run the moment he finds out about the mafia connection. If that was not enough, Ramin's mother gets dragged in near the end in what feels like a last-ditch attempt to throw more chaos at a story that was already all over the place. Revenge eventually happens and love somehow finds a way through.
The real issue here is not even the story itself, it is how badly everything is put together. The same situations keep happening on a loop with no actual movement forward, no tension building, no real character development, just the same ideas being recycled in slightly different packaging. Every character feels like a cartoon version of a person rather than anyone you could buy as real. Even when they are stuck in genuinely high-stakes moments, the way they react and the way those scenes are constructed feels unplanned and awkward, like nobody thought it through before the cameras rolled. The two leads have zero chemistry together, and the whole thing gives off the energy of actors being handed their lines minutes before shooting and told to just figure it out. The kisses were bad, lust was being thrown at the screen as a substitute for actual connection, and the execution across the board needed serious work. As if the already overwhelming wave of Thai BLs was not enough to keep up with, now we are getting bad vertical Thai BLs on top of it. I spent most of my watch time either rolling my eyes or laughing at how genuinely absurd it all was. Do yourself a favour and skip this one entirely. (1.5/10)
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